Sour dough baguette

Sourdough Baguettes

I’ve fallen hard for these pointy sticks. Their beautifully exaggerative shape that starts with a thick center and transitions into dangerously sharp instruments at the ends. Colors stretching from the periphery of black to almost-too-light; contrast that elicits stares. A creamy and tender interior that’s so porous it soaks the butter inevitably spread thick during moments of eager anticipation. Pure sourdough baguettes are a tricky thing, I think, but when everything lines up just right all your past shortcomings discovered in testing vanish in an instant. All the trials and tests and tweaks fade away, leaving only a sense of accomplishment — that feeling of satisfaction that only comes when expectation and end result align.

These beautiful baguettes do take concerted effort and practice but the results are absolutely worth the work. Ok, technically these are demi-baguettes given their shorter stature and perhaps reduced dough weight, but the nature of this bread holds to the ideal. The slender shape, thin crust, and delicate interior simply exude baguette, even if their specs are a little skewed.

I’ve been working on this recipe relentlessly, and if you follow me on Instagram you know this, but all the work put into these revolves around the simple fact baguettes are just plain challenging. I find that beyond the required fermentation attention, flour selection, hydration adjustments, cold versus warm bulk decisions, and seeking that correct proof point, there’s the matter of coercing the dough delicately into the correct shape. As with many things, they simply require practice.

Their challenge stems from the fact that even small shaping mishaps will show themselves quite clearly in the end result. There’s a reason why many bakers consider baguettes to be one of the hardest breads to make… A benchmark of sorts. But even if the shape or the interior isn’t exactly 

perfect, they’re always delicious and incredibly rewarding to make. Plus, the more you make them, the more the process slows down internally, the more all the small adjustments add up to large improvements.

Because shaping these can be frustrating at times, I’ve written an entire guide to shaping baguettes — complete with a video (which is also included below) to help illustrate things in real-time. I plan to flesh the guide out even further with alternate shaping methods as I experiment and work at these into the future. But as-is, the guide is a concise reference point for shaping sourdough baguettes.

Let’s talk about flour.

Flour Selection

In my early iterations of this formula, I worked in 10% white spelt flour (that’s spelt flour that has some percentage of bran/germ sifted out). My intention was to introduce more extensibility in the dough along with the classic, and wonderful, flavor of spelt. After many trials I decided to drop the spelt due to a few reasons:

• at 73% hydration, this dough had plenty of extensibility
• while whole grain spelt flour has an amazing flavor, 10% white spelt just didn’t contribute enough to the end result
• white spelt flour can be hard to obtain

In the end, I substituted out the spelt for a higher protein white flour (in this case Central Milling High Mountain, 13% protein). This formula could easily be adapted to be 100% lower-protein white flour, omitting the high protein flour entirely. If you take this path, know that the dough might be a little more extensible and sticky, potentially requiring a longer mix time.

Sourdough Baguettes

Similar to my Kamut demi-baguette recipe, I utilized a short warm, and long cold, two-step bulk fermentation for this dough. When I tested cold proofing these baguettes in shape the results always yielded a slightly thicker crust compared to a warm final proof. Further, a cold bulk also adds to the flexibility and convenience of this dough. 

This flexible dough can be warm-bulked for same-day baguettes or cold-bulked overnight for baguettes fresh the next day.

The entire process is split up over the course of two days. This affords you the option to bake the baguettes the next day when you want them — for breakfast, lunch, or even dinner.

Vitals

The following formula results in 6 demi-baguettes. I baked these in two batches of three in my home oven. When baking the first three, the remaining three were rested in the fridge on a proofing board.

Total Dough Weight	2100 grams
Pre-fermented Flour	4.00%
Hydration	73.00%
Yield	6 x 350g baguettes (appx 14″ long)

Total Formula

This is a roll-up of the entire formula for this dough. Read on to see the levain and the dough mix broken out into two separate tables.

Note: Going forward this will be how I list dough formulas here to help avoid confusion. The Total Formula table below shows a snapshot of the overall percentages of each ingredient, their weights, and a description of the flour. Each subsequent table (Levain, Dough Mix) shows only what you need to mix for that component (Levain and Dough Mix), independently.

For an in-depth explanation on how I use Baker’s Percentages below, see my beginner’s sourdough post.

Weight	Ingredient	Baker’s Percentage
1056g	White bread flour, malted (Giusto’s Artisan Bread Flour, ~11.5% protein)	90.00%
117g	High protein bread flour (Central Milling High Mountain, ~13% protein)	10.00%
856g	H2O	73.00%
24g	Salt	2.00%
47g	Starter (100% hydration)	4.00%

Levain (Liquid & Mild)

One of my goals with these sourdough baguettes was to keep the flavor profile mild and just-barely-sour. Utilizing all white flour in the levain, a high hydration, and using it before it becomes overly ripe all ensure acidity is kept low. These properties eventually transfer over to the final dough itself.

Weight	Ingredient	Baker’s Percentage
47g	Mature liquid starter (100% hydration)	50%
47g	White bread flour, malted (Giusto’s Artisan Bread Flour, 11.5% protein)	50%
47g	H2O @ 80°F (26°C)	100%

This is a fast levain build: we go from feeding to maturity in only 3 hours. The high inoculation percentage and warm temperature expedite the maturation of this levain. If you’d like to stretch this time out a bit, to better fit your schedule, drop the inoculation down to 50% mature starter and it’ll be ready in around 5-6 hours.

At 100% inoculation my levain was ready to be mixed into the dough after 3 hours when kept at 77°F – 80°F (25°C – 26°C).

Above you can see a picture of my levain right before mixing it into my dough. Plenty of bubbles on top and the sides, and if you look closely, you’ll see it just starting to fall at the edges.